Susan! She was as much a Susan as I was a Jupiter. I said then, and I say now, and I shall keep on saying, she was the loveliest creature I had ever seen even in—I won’t say dreams, because I don’t dream—but in pictures. She was straight as a mast. Carried herself as if she were queen of the earth; which she was. Yet with a dainty grace which for bewitching charm was beyond anything I had ever imagined. And her eyes! They were like twin moons in a summer sky. As I looked at her every nerve in my body tingled.
She added, since she saw me speechless:
“I am the daughter of the gods.”
That was better. She was that. The daughter of the gods—as she put it herself. I could have dropped at her feet and worshipped. But she went on:
“You are from the ship? You are the captain?”
“I am Max Lander.”
“Max Lander?” She repeated my name in a sort of a kind of a way which made everything seem to swim before my eyes. “It is a good name. We shall be friends.”
“Friends!”
She held out her hands to me. As I took them into mine, Lord! how I shivered. I fancy she felt me shaking by the way she smiled. It made me worse, her smile did. She kept cool through it all.
“Shall we not be friends?”